As someone who called out all the religious "fake news" my family and culture were trying to indoctrinate me with when I was 10, I am only surprised that so many people are only concerned about people believing in things without evidence now. People are barely aware of their own consciousness, let alone all the ways in which we can so easily fool ourselves, or WANT to believe certain things. Americans are consumers foremost, and this includes consuming ideas and groupthink, call them out on it, kindly.
I have recently lost family members to Covid, so please try to make any "hoax" people aware of their shared responsibility in the ongoing loss of life, do not "tolerate" it. This is equal to many Germans going along with all the beliefs about Jews being responsible for imagined crimes, and will be viewed as harshly with hindsight. Call them out.
This.
My own parents started becoming toxic racists as they got older. That's not just my wife and I thinking that, my mom's sister thought so too.
When people can safely express bigoted hate and bile, they will express it more often.
When people can safely take hateful bigoted actions, they will take them more often.
A few people are incorrigably evil. A few people are determined to be good. The bulk are in the middle and a huge chunk of that middle group will "go along to get along". If being nice to minorities is what others expect, the wishy-washy folks will go along. If treating minorities like dirt is what their peer group expects, well, that's what they'll do, too.
My goal is to never let people cross the line into active bigotry without them paying a social price for it. That social price may include others turning away from them in disgust, it may mean folks calling them out for their vile statements or actions, or the law called on them if they've broken it -- or if life and limb of others are in immediate danger due to their actions, then using violence until they stop endangering others. I want their actions to be in the public spotlight so they become extremely uncomfortable about actively being a bigot towards others.
There aren't gobs of people determined to commit evil bigoted actions no matter what. But if the wishy-washy people feel it's safer to support the bigots rather than nice people, then evil starts to rule all of us.
The bigots have been emboldened for the last 4 1/2 years. It's past time to make them pay again.